Guide
The Imagined Future Temple
3rd Century BCE–3rd Century CE
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By Carol Bakhos
Building on biblical accounts such as Isaiah 6:1–7 and Ezekiel 40–44, Jewish authors living after the destruction of the Second Temple described a variety of imagined Temples in the historical or eschatological future.
Related Primary Sources
Primary Source
Enoch’s Vision of the Rebuilt Temple
1 Enoch 90:28–30, 36
Then I stood still, looking at that ancient house being transformed: All the pillars and all the columns were pulled out; and the ornaments of that house were packed and taken out together with them…
Primary Source
The Tosefta on the Rebuilt Temple
t. Menaḥot 13:23
But in the last building [i.e., the Temple], which will be built in the future in our lives and in our days, what is said about it? In the days to come, the Mount of the Lord’s House shall stand firm…
Primary Source
A New Jerusalem
New Jerusalem
[ . . . ] two hundred and eighty cub[its . . .] [ . . . th]ese blocks alongside [the] city wall [ . . . ] [ . . . ] the south, and half [ . . . ] [ . . . ] the blocks [ . . . ] [ . . .…
Primary Source
The Eschatological Temple
2 Baruch 4:1–5; 59:4
And the Lord said to me:
This city will be delivered up for a time,…
Primary Source
The Heavenly Temple
Revelation 21:1–2, 21–22
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from…